What To Say
by orangeflavor
Summary: Looking at Harry like this stilled the words in her throat.
1. What To Say

Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: This is set after book five, and disregards six and seven. Post-Hogwarts, in the midst of the war, according to my ideas.

What To Say

"_Looking at Harry like this stilled the words in her throat."_

She could practically smell the magic in the air.

That thick, heavy, pungent feel was all around him.

Hermione had climbed up the wooden steps to the attic, knowing she would find Harry there. Downstairs, she had heard Molly Weasley's inquiries as to where he had gone. Ron had been looking for him as well. But after the first few minutes of searching Grimmauld Place they realized that if he wanted to be found he would let them find him. The search had ended then, and every one was content to let Harry have his peace. He had so little of it these days anyway.

Hermione never said she knew where he would go on days like these, when the training drilled so hard and so deeply into him began to wear away his very body.

Magic didn't come without repercussions. There was stress. There was pressure. And yes, there still were the laws of physics, though not as accurately applied as in muggle life. When you transfigure something, though it's appearance changes, the actual molecules and matter of the object stays consistent. When you mix a potion to prolong death it will most certainly have side effects you never could have imagined. When you apparate you always run the risk of one of your atoms rearranging out of order, something that could throw your whole system off, render your body useless for life. When you call upon something to appear it has to materialize from some actual plane of existence where it was before.

Hermione was still working on a theory about that, split reality, but she hardly thought that was relevant to the situation.

The point was, when you cast strong enough and dark enough spells, and when you train in it for four years, trying to master the only power you know can challenge the Dark Lord, it begins to show.

Hermione can't even remember well how Harry looked before the training began. All she knows is that his eyes have been permanently dulled. And his frame has lost its suppleness, becoming edgier, sharper over time, a quality she never would have associated with Harry before. The way he carried himself now was almost unnatural in its ghostly smoothness, the way he slinked through shadows you never knew could hold a person.

There was something definitively 'Harry' that was lost on him now, gone and fled from his body as the magic invaded its place. Had been that way for a while now.

It was only seven years after their Hogwarts days but Hermione was sure it had seemed longer to everyone, Harry especially. And in those seven years they had neither lost nor gained ground in the war against Voldemort. It was weighing on all of them.

The first time Hermione had seen Harry sneak up the stairs to the abandoned attic was the night they lost Moody. No one had thought to look for him, not when they were all wallowing in their own grief. That was also the first night Molly had ever forgotten to make dinner, instead she was away in her and Arthur's spare room crying about lost chances and dear friends. Hermione had been so dazed that night. She barely registered Remus slumped silently in the armchair at the fire, a full glass of whiskey hanging limply in his grip, not touched all night. Fred and George and Ron and Ginny and all other Weasleys still left alive had been in Ginny's room, around the bed and on the floor and any place that had let them still feel alive, just talking to fill the space the air had left.

She was in the hallway at the time. Just standing there, at the end of all the rooms. She hadn't moved from the spot she was standing at when Ron first came up the landing in somber duty to tell her what had happened at the ambush. After a few minutes of consolation, Ron had left to be with his family. She still had not moved.

And suddenly, barely, she saw a small movement down the tiny crawl way to her right, veering off the main hallway. She almost didn't catch it if it weren't for the light of the retreating sun filtering in through the partially opened shutters around the hall. She turned her head slightly, squinted in the direction and caught sight of dark hair and the glint of what she surmised to be glasses as a figure slinked skillfully through the shadows of the stairway entrance and up into the attic.

She was surprised for a moment, and almost fearful of the deadly stealth she suddenly realized Harry possessed. It was that moment that she saw how Harry really changed. She almost ran from the hall with fright, ready to empty out her stomach in the privacy of her room where she would quietly wonder how it all got so screwed up.

But she didn't move. She just stood there watching the dim light of dusk stream it's way in thin slants across the hallway floor, and wondering how long Harry had been carrying this alone. And even though she felt this ache in her chest that told her he desperately needed someone, she felt that she wasn't the right person to be that. So she turned away and left the hallway, crossing over to the landing and back downstairs where she could busy herself with making dinner for them all, and not think about Moody.

She told herself that Harry needed his peace, and that it wasn't her place to interrupt that.

That was what she told herself every time she noticed him slip away. She would follow him through the hallway, unaware of whether he knew she was there or not, but trying her hardest to stay undetected. She would watch him creep through the crawl space and up the rotting steps to the attic above. But she never got past the first step of the stairs herself.

Today was different though. Today she forced herself up here, not caring if he wanted her there or not, because she knew he would self-implode if something wasn't done, and she didn't have the heart to tell the others of his sanctuary. She figured he wanted it kept as much a secret as he could.

So she made her way slowly up the stairs, taking in long slow breaths with every step, smoothing out her features as to not look completely struck with helplessness in the face of Harry.

When she opens the door she is assaulted with the pure, unadulterated power sifting through the room. It was like opening a door to Death Valley, where the heat was so strong you felt it literally push you to the floor. That's what Harry's magic felt like. Like Death Valley.

It made her shudder, the connotations of that analogy.

She squinted her eyes to make out the room bathed in dim orange and grey light, as the heat from the cramped space began to settle on her bones, making the room so unbearably stifling and thick she was surprised Harry could survive up here, let alone run here for refuge.

The low ceiling slanted down to her right and beams were erected to support the roof to the floor below. It was slanted so sharply she had to duck under the threshold and drop to her hands and knees to crawl through the small space. She was surprised she had not found Harry immediately in the confining room, but when she caught the sight of a shoe she started suddenly and realized Harry was sitting with his back resting against the wall farther away to her left.

It was uncanny, his ability to morph with his surroundings, melt into the shadows as if he were never there, make you think you were alone. It was starting to scare Hermione how easily he seemed to do it.

"Harry?"

He didn't answer, so she took the moment to look at him, with his knees propped up and his arms resting on them, dangling before him as his head lay against the wall, turned to his left a bit so he could face the light coming in from the slits in the shutters. The streams of orange were sharp against his dark features, one crossing over where his wand hand dangled before him, another beaming across where his heart should be, and all the others insignificant to Hermione.

She swallowed and began to crawl slowly and carefully over to sit in front of him. She set herself down across from him and crossed her legs underneath her, her hands clasping together before her. "Harry? Are you alright?" She could almost hit herself for that one.

She doesn't think he can see her, at least not truly see her. He probably knows she's there, sees some figure sitting in front of him, but his eyes don't recognize the present situation. He's looking off to some place Hermione can't see, he wasn't even in the room anymore. He was off somewhere between second and third year where his voice began to crack and he couldn't wait to grow up.

Hermione nibbled on her bottom lip a moment, worrying that he would not come out of this one, but not wanting to push him too hard. She knew today was horrible for all of them. A raid gone bad, so terribly, unbelievably bad. Dumbledore was captured, which for him was worse than death, and for all the rest of them, a sign that the tide was changing, though not in the direction they were all banking on for so long.

The enemy had ways far worse than Veritaserum to make captives spill more than guts. She knew. She had seen it first hand. But this wasn't about her right now. If Dumbledore cracks, and Hermione isn't so sure anymore that he won't, they were all in far greater danger than any one of them could handle.

It was easy for Hermione to see how Harry was taking this. He was so worn away lately he had nothing left to hide his emotions behind, and they simply laid there bare before him for every one to see. Hermione could understand that Harry would take this the way he did, because now, there was so much importance on his succeeding, and so much more disappointment he was afraid of causing. Hermione could have snorted with disgust at the way people threw themselves at him, asking to be saved, delivered, as if he wasn't trying to make that happen for every single person in the world, perfect strangers who never even heard his name.

The whole unfairness of the situation causes the slight prickle of tears to appear behind Hermione's lids. But she knows that this is no time for Harry to see her crying, so she wipes a hand across her eyes once and the wetness has disappeared, replaced by a hardness she usually uses when wand to wand with Deatheaters.

"Harry." This time it is not a question, but a demand.

She was surprised to find that he turned to look at her, and when his eyes met hers she was suddenly lost as to what to say. Just sitting there, in that thick-aired, cramped attic space, staring at Harry Potter as he sat with a heaviness to his shoulders that spoke of things far worse than death, Hermione was unable to process any form of cohesive thought. All she could do was stare at him, and take in the green of his eyes that she used to love when they flashed bright at her. She had never felt so wretched before in her entire life, because who was she to say cheer up, brush it off, keep going? She couldn't possibly imagine that kind of burden.

And she was suddenly faced with the thought that she was the completely wrong person to be up here. She felt that if Ron had been here instead of her, he would give Harry a manly slap on the back, nudge him a couple of times and heartily tell him to stop being a "bloody wanker." But all in that friendly-subtle-guy-way that said Ron completely understood why Harry needed to be a bloody wanker right now and that it was fine by him if it helped.

She thought that if it had been Sirius up here, he would make some sort of light-hearted joke and delve into stories about him and the Marauders and Harry would feel like he was far away from this place, somewhere where all this didn't have to weigh on him so much, and he could pretend to be someone without responsibilities.

She thought that if it had been Ginny, she would have immediately flung her arms around Harry and squeezed until there was no more strength in her arms. She would force him to hug her back with that endearing stubbornness that said she never gave up on you. She may even give him a kiss upon the cheek, let him nuzzle into her arms, whisper sweet assurances of everything being alright, maybe even drop a few of her own tears upon his head, just to let him know that she was there with him.

But Hermione didn't have any of that. She didn't have any back-slaps or stories or cuddling skills. All Hermione had were facts, simple, cold, unmovable facts.

Hermione could tell you the four types of magical plants that grew in Antarctica and the best times to harvest all of them. She could tell you the reasons behind Hogwarts' complex structural design. She could tell you the advantages of casting summoning spells on the Winter Equinox. She could tell you the antidote to any potion you may ever encounter in your life.

But Hermione had no idea what to say to Harry when she finally met his eyes.

There were long moments in which they just sat there staring at each other, breathing in quiet hesitation.

And before Hermione could even register the change, Harry's eyes were shut tight with the effort of preventing the tears.

Hermione stared at him in breathless anticipation, and for a moment she thought she was asleep upon her bed, dreaming this whole moment in her head and she was fearful of waking from this. But it was only there for a moment before she felt the very real pressure of Harry's head falling to her lap and his hands wrapping around her frame, gripping her shirt so tight she thought he would put holes right through it with his fingers.

Just before that first sob, just before that first shaky exhale of tears upon his breath, Hermione felt the magic in the room shift and wrap itself around her, melting with her fingertips to flow through her arms and into her chest where she felt a sudden unnatural pound of her heart against her chest. She felt Harry's magic wrap its fingers around her heart and hold on as if it had no heart left of its own to cling to.

Suddenly, before she could exhale that sucked in breath at the invasion, there was a wail so cracked and bleeding from Harry it near broke her restraint of her tears with its first utterance. And then she was painfully aware of Harry's head in her lap, tears wetting her skirt, arms gripping her to him tightly, and such inhumanly wounded sounds ripping from his throat. She didn't notice her own hands wrapped in his hair and around his back as she ducked herself down to clasp him tightly to her, unwilling to let go for fear she may never feel this agonizingly alive for the rest of her life. Wrapped up in Harry there, leaking tears of her own upon his huddled form, feeling the last of the warm orange beams spread across their figures, Hermione had never felt so completely and utterly devastated, nor had she ever felt so irrevocably linked to him.

She could still feel Harry's magic tugging at her heart, something she thought she would never lose, and she was reluctant to part from him again. So she just held him, and let him wail and sob and clutch her to him with a strength she thought Harry had lost long ago.

It was a moment she realized she still had something to fight for, if only for this.

A moment she understood the true being that was Harry Potter. A moment she didn't mind getting sweat and tears and worse all over her if it meant she could hold Harry here just like this and be his release of everything they forced him to hold onto.

It was a long while before she realized he had slowly grown silent, and now just rested upon her lap as she slowly stroked his hair, watching his face at it slowly drifted toward the edge of slumber.

"Hermione."

She was surprised at the calm beneath that voice, and her hand stilled against his temple. He opened his eyes to look up at her and she could have sworn she didn't see so much dull over the green.

"Yes, Harry?" She was proud her voice had not cracked with the threat of more tears.

He almost smiled, but she couldn't be sure, because she hadn't seen what Harry's smile looked like for such a long time.

"I'm glad it was you." He shut his eyes and raised his hand to connect with hers, holding it in his warm palm.

Hermione would always remember that at that instant, she had no regrets that it was her up there with a trembling, vulnerable Harry, and she was forever relieved that she had not found the words at the time to express what she could not have shown in any other way but to hold him to her chest, and feel the beat of his magic fuse with the rhythm of her heart.


	2. Everything and Nothing

Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: To be honest, I had actually accidentally missed the 'Complete' button when I filed this story, and never meant for it to be a multi-chapter piece. But as I heard comments of hope for another one I got to thinking, and eventually saw another scene between these two characters play out in my head. And I only felt it fair to share it. I believe this will be all for 'What To Say', but hey, I'm always open to new things, so I guess we'll see. Please enjoy.

2

"_Words were everything and nothing with them."_

Harry once found a picture in Remus' wallet of Harry as a baby. It was a still one, a muggle one, and Harry knew that it was taken by his mother.

In the picture, Harry is only about nine or ten months old, and he's sitting on a blanket spread out on the grass of what looked like his parent's backyard. His eyes aren't on the camera, but just a bit above it, focused on something over it. And he's smiling. That mouth-open and on-the-verge-of-laughing kind of smile.

Harry knows he's staring at his mother there.

He had stolen the picture from Remus, knowing the werewolf would know, and not feeling guilty in the slightest, something that still had him wonder at sometimes.

But Remus never said anything about where he figured the picture had gotten to, so Harry never said anything either. He just horded it away, and when days became too heavy to even think he would pull it out and sneak a long look, imagining what his mother looked like behind that camera.

And now, sitting at the dining table of the Burrow in the wee hours of the morning, Harry couldn't tear his fingers from the image before him, laid out on the tabletop.

He had not turned on any lights in the dining room, but the window above the sink let in the beginnings of blue as the day slowly approached.

Harry and the Weasleys, along with Hermione and a few others Harry couldn't be bothered to remember at the time, had moved to the Burrow from Grimmauld Place the day after they received the news of Dumbledore's capture. They planned to stay the night before moving out and going on the run for a few weeks, changing safe houses every few days, just to be cautious.

They were preparing to leave this morning, but Harry had not slept, not since he had laid crying in Hermione's lap in the privacy of the attic. Now, he sat at the dining table, fanning his fingers across the image, and he could almost imagine the feel of the grass beneath his fingertips.

It was then that he heard the slight tread of footfalls coming slowly down the stairs. There was only one person he knew that could be up at this hour.

When the figure stopped just inside the doorway to the dining room, Harry kept his back to the threshold and closed his eyes. His lip quirked up in a small smile. "Morning, Hermione."

The person shifted their footing, and then started walking around to stand across from Harry on the other side of the small table. Harry looked up and saw Hermione looking at him, still clad in her pajamas, her hair wild about her shoulders and face. She smiled slightly, and then pulled the chair out to sit. She sat facing the window and closed her eyes to the dim blue light of the outside.

"Merlin, it's early."

Harry chuckled softly, then looked across to the muggle clock Arthur had set up on one of the kitchen shelves. "It's 5:15."

Hermione winced. "I don't think I can retrain my body for any later time. I'm just doomed to insomnia." She turned her body so that she could rest her arms across the table and lay her head upon them. "I came down for coffee."

"We're out."

"Shucks." Hermione's voice was slightly muffled from her pajama-clad arms.

"Do you want some tea?" Harry still had not put away his photo, and wondered if Hermione had even noticed it.

She opened one eye to peer at him. "I think…no. Maybe I'll just get packed and try to catch a nap."

They both knew there was no getting back to sleep for Hermione, but neither of them said anything.

There was silence in that dining room as Harry fingered the edge of the photograph and Hermione breathed silently into the warmth of her arms across the table. Harry took the moment to look at her, and for the first time, noticed how accustomed he had come to her face. But if he really looked hard enough, he could see the small, shallow hole on her left cheek left by a chicken pox scar. And he could see the light brown beauty mark just above her right temple. And he could see the lone freckle that planted itself just below her right eye.

Hermione herself was rather ordinary, when her personality was not taken into account.

But then, Harry would look at her hair, and suddenly he was reminded of his mother's garden, a garden he was sure he couldn't possibly remember at that age. And yet, looking at that shade of brown, he just _knew_ what that garden looked like, without even having to think about it.

And when Harry would look at her smile, suddenly, he could smell his father's cooking, and imagine what his parents looked like in the kitchen, smearing food over each other's noses and laughing, before finally trying to actually cook it. Harry doesn't even know how he can remember what his father's cooking smells like, but he always does, when he sees Hermione smile.

And he doesn't even need to close his eyes to imagine what hers look like, to see those deep brown irises (plain by any other extent) and know that he will always be moved by them. Because when he really looks at her, really sees those eyes, he can feel the heat of the fire as his parents laid with him on the rug before the fireplace. Rocking him to sleep when he couldn't bear to be away from them.

Harry couldn't fully comprehend how Hermione could shift his senses so. Harry couldn't understand how Hermione felt so much like Home to him.

He looked back down to the picture in his hand, the worn and tattered edge brushing along his fingertips.

It was so unreal. Exchanging these trivial words with Hermione at the break of dawn, the danger of invasion creeping up to nip at their heels as they readied to flee.

It's 5:15 in the morning and there they sat talking about tea and coffee after Harry had spent an innumerable amount of time wailing his soul out into Hermione's hands.

Yeah. Unreal.

"Do you believe there's a God, Hermione?" Harry hadn't even known he'd spoken the words until he heard her shift across from him.

"Excuse me?" Harry saw Hermione lift her head up from her arms to stare at him.

He set the picture down on the table and Hermione saw the image for the first time. She squinted, confused, then leaned further across the table to look at it, her body turning to face Harry across the tabletop.

"I said," Harry's voice drew Hermione's attention back to his face. "'Do you believe there's a God'?"

Hermione was silent for a moment, then leaned back in her chair to stare at Harry. "Why are you asking me this Harry?"

Harry shrugged half-heartedly and looked back down at the picture, his hand unconsciously moving to finger the corner again. "I don't know exactly. I think it's just…something I've always wanted to ask you."

Harry heard her soft breathing for a few moments, before her voice drew his head back up to look at her. "I can't."

Harry furrowed his brows. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you see…," she folded her hands atop the table, "It's like this, Harry. I can't believe that there's a God. If there were a supreme power over everything in this universe then it would have a supreme power over me, which, in essence, would render _me_ powerless. And that goes against everything I believe about the importance of choices. It would make my existence insignificant. It would make my decisions of no consequence. And I know," she closed her eyes, exhaled a breath into the still air, "I just _know_ that that kind of thinking would make me careless, make me apathetic. And in this world, I can't afford to live like that. For my sake. For your sake. For everyone and everything I know. I can't."

Harry stared at Hermione in complete wonder, his fingers having long stilled their motion against the picture. There was a moment in which he thought he had lost his breath, before his lips quirked up in a small smile, and a soft chuckle escaped him. "Merlin, Hermione, I don't know how you can talk like that."

Hermione cocked her head a moment, but waited in silence for him to continue.

Harry drew in a large breath and exhaled it in a loud sigh, leaning back in his chair, the image left forgotten on the tabletop. "How do you speak like that?"

"Like what, Harry?" Her voice was soft, yielding.

Harry ran a hand roughly down his face. "So…so…" He looked at her. "I don't know. Like every word means something, I guess."

Hermione smiled slightly. "Well, for me, it does."

Harry snorted faintly. "I wish I could use words the way you do. Why can't I speak like that?"

"Because you don't need to, Harry."

Harry looked at her then. "What do you mean?"

"You don't need words, Harry." Hermione leaned back over the table to plant her arms over the surface. "I think," Hermione paused, contemplating. "Well, I think your way of communicating is on such a higher and deeper level that using words would demean that. You know?"

Harry shook his head silently.

"It's like…you connect with people through so many more meaningful ways. Sight. Touch. Feeling." She smiled. "Magic. I think that's so much more powerful than being able to use words. There's no possible way for you to communicate than the way you've always done it. If you put it to words…" She shrugged, turned her head to look out the window again. "Well, the importance would be lost on all of us."

And that idea, that knowledge that words weren't necessary with them, for Harry, it meant that things weren't as hopeless as he'd imagined.

He had been taught that words meant everything, that words _were_ everything. Words were the only thing Harry ever thought he had in common with others. You could feel words. You could understand words. Greetings, farewells, secrets, promises, declarations, concealments, knowledge, encouragement, advice, threats, spells.

Anything that needed to be known could be found in words.

When Harry had been told the truth about his magic, on that cold, dreary night when Hagrid had come barging through the door, he had reveled in the realization that he had a voice in this world.

Harry could hold onto that. A voice.

Everything he ever said in his life he said with the knowledge that words were a gift.

When Ron had thanked him for making it to his sudden wedding, in the middle of a war, barely scraping by with his life:

"Anything for family."

When he and Ginny were hiding tucked in a ditch, ready to ambush a group of Death Eaters on the grounds of Hogwarts:

"I'll cover you."

When he spent his twenty-first birthday in the basement of Grimmauld Place, sharing seventy-three year old scotch with Sirius:

"I love you. You know that, right?"

When Dumbledore had stormed through Death Eaters and trolls and giants and worse to rescue Harry on that night that still haunts his nightmares:

"Thank you. God, thank you for everything."

When he had first found the picture of himself in Remus' wallet:

"I miss my parents."

When Luna, Ron and Neville were out for the count, Bellatrix slowly waking from unconsciousness, Lucius Malfoy lunging at him with wild, crazed eyes:

"Avada Kedavra"

When Harry had spent that day lying in Hermione's lap, leaking the grief of too many years into her welcoming hands:

"I'm glad it was you."

But now, sitting here with Hermione, where words would only debase what he felt, Harry found that looking at her almost made him want to cry again.

He dropped his head to the table, held it in his hands, and Hermione was taken aback for a moment, reaching across suddenly, then stopping at the sight of his shaking shoulders.

"God," Harry slowly shook his head in his hands, and Hermione bit her lip, wanting to hold him again.

"I just hope there's still time."

Hermione stopped, staring at him. She pulled her arm back slowly. "Time for what, Harry?"

Harry lifted his head, and Hermione saw how he was ready to let himself break.

He closed his eyes, breathed in deep, wanting to never breathe back out. Maybe he would slip away into a place where he didn't have to do this, didn't have to wake up every morning feeling like this. "Time for everything. Anything."

He opened his eyes, looked at her. Her hair and eyes and face. "Time to go Home."

Hermione stood up, and before Harry even realized she was moving she was kneeling down next to him, looking up with eyes pleading for her Harry to come back into the world. She grasped his hand, and Harry was surprised to find that she was shaking, too.

It was then that he saw how Hermione wasn't nearly the steadfast rock they all took her for. And he wanted to shout at himself for loading all this baggage on her when she must have been hurting just as much. There was no mistaking the redness of her eyes, the thinness of her cheeks, the brightness that was Hermione now gone and fled.

And he wondered if she cried herself to sleep nights as well.

But she wouldn't cry now, not when Harry needed her so much. So she breathed deep, held tight to his hand, and wouldn't let him look away from her eyes.

"We've still got time, Harry. There's always time to go Home." She couldn't understand why it was so hard for her to swallow, why breathing was so difficult now. "And I'm always…_always_ ready to go with you. Anywhere. With you Harry, anywhere."

Harry saw the first reluctant tear break the hold of her heavy eyelashes and stream it's way down her cheek. He wanted so much for her to never cry again. But she was smiling. She was _smiling_. Somehow, suddenly, Harry knew that it wouldn't be the last time he got to see it.

"We can go home, Harry." And she meant it. She meant all of it. Everything she never put into words, because he knew anyway.

She was always ready to go home with him.

And two years later, when the evil that was Lord Voldemort was banished from the magical world, that's exactly what they did.

Harry and Hermione. Home.


End file.
